Gail Tsukiyama

Hana suffers from Werner's syndrome, a disease that makes her age twice as fast as normal, so at thirty-eight, she has the appearance of an eighty-year-old, and as her family cares for her, they all must learn to cope with her illness and impending death.

Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers.
It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling,

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As World War II threatens their comfortable life in Hong Kong, young Joan and Emma Lew escape with their family to spend the war years in Macao. When they return home, Emma has developed a deep interest in travel and new experiences, while Joan has turned to movies and thoughts of romance to escape the problems of ordinary life. As the girls become women, each follows a path different from what her family expects. But through periods of great happiness...

On the eve of World War II a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. His own adventure becomes entwined with the lives of three people he meets there.